Luuko loved to sleep. Of course, that isn’t anything unique when it comes to humans, but as should be obvious by now, her reasons for enjoying it were her own alone.

So, upon reaching her apartment, she spent very little time awake. She drank some water, ate some food, and slapped herself atop her bed before drifting asleep underneath her fortress of blankets.

Then, she dreamed. Her mind moved into a world beyond the world, one where the consciousness of others intermingled with her own. It seemed to her that she existed on another plane, where she could glance into the bodies of others through strings that connected them to her, like a wall of security cameras.

She focused her attention on one random string, and led her mind through it, moving across it like electricity on a telephone pole.

Once she entered the body, she did what seemed natural from years of using her magic, and enveloped its sleeping soul, as well as the strings that connected it to its body, tricking the body into following her command.

If they woke up, she was still connected to her body through her magic, so she would be ejected back to it. Well, not that she was sure her body was even her body anymore. Either way, she had to avoid that, so she made sure not to open their eyes or move too rapidly, or else she could rouse her thrall. Mmm, perhaps that terminology was a little ominous.

To avoid that, she had apparently evolved an ability entirely unrelated to her polysomnomancy, a third eye. Spiritual in nature, it would let her see without using real eyes.

Focusing on her feeling of self, Luuko drudged magic from the depths of her soul, forming a third eye to view the world through.

She sat in a fairly bare room, made in a modern style, sleek and simple. There were two doors and a few chairs to sit on beside potted plants. She looked down on herself, getting an idea of who she was possessing.

Ehh, just some sixty-something-year-old man.

Retreating inward to begin the homework Drade had given her, she tried to imagine what Drade would see with his manasense. Her soul covering another’s, hijacking its nerval connections to its body, like amorphous goo.

Luuko almost opened her eyes in surprise as she realized just how creepy she actually was.

Then, she began attacking the soul. Apparenly, it was ‘perfectly safe’ to initiate soul-on-soul warfare.

She remembered Drade’s words when they had talked in the library earlier:

‘I’ve fought in a few metaphysical skirmishes before. Usually, nobody gets seriously hurt, but it depends on the nature of the attack. From what I can tell, all your ability does is hijack their body while their soul is defenseless, tricking it into following your own command. There’s nothing inherently dangerous about that, at least not for your thrall, because the instant they wake up, their soul will lose its connection to your body.

There are many layers to metaphysical warfare, but for now I’ll teach you what’s applicable to your power. The simplest thing you can do is what you’ve already grown used to doing: hijacking. However, you should also be able to sever their soul’s ties, the ‘string’ that represents the soul’s nerves, basically. The most nefarious of things you can do in soul-on-soul combat, however, is soul unbinding. If you ever interact with a soul and feel like you’re slamming it against a wall, you can be sure you’re trying to unbind that soul. For both practical and ethical reasons, you should never go forward with soul unbinding...’ Drade had paused, which had struck Luuko as strange, and she couldn’t forget it. ‘Regardless, destringing a soul is only temporary and can be undone in a matter of minutes if you know what you’re doing, so it’s safe enough for practice.’

Drade wanted Luuko to try to sever a soul’s ties to its body. The only reason Luuko hadn’t tried it before was that it felt invasive, even for someone who possessed people as a hobby.

The thing was, Luuko didn’t even know where to begin. The magical nerves she needed to sever were as hard as steel when compared to her flimsy, liquid soul. It was like expecting jello to make for good scissors.

Still, Drade had instructed her to become jello scissors and try that, and so, she tried. She imagined her soul morphing into sharp scissors, then clasping down onto the soul’s nerves, cutting it. Her soul mimicked her thoughts, yet when it contacted the nerves, she felt it squish and morph around them, losing its form against the structured magic.

Luuko tried many things to cut the strands, and yet it was clear that nothing was helping. Her soul was so immaterial that no amount of reshaping would work.

As she almost gave up, a child had appeared from one of the doors, though Luuko didn’t remember seeing any of them open.

“Dad, I’m done. Are you asleep again!?” she said, seeming upset.

Luuko enjoyed pranking people with her possession. Among her targets for such harassment, children were the most gullible, and word of her horseplay wouldn’t be believed if it came from one.

So, she saw a perfect victim lined up for some meddling. “Yes, I am,” Luuko said, speaking and standing through her thrall. “But I’m not.”

The girl’s eyes fluttered in surprise, or rather, shock, before she regained a small smile and tilted her head, curious. “I don’t get it,” she said with exaggerated nativity.

Luuko found the behavior strange but chalked it up to a child acting strange, which wasn’t really strange. “I’m not your father...I am Luuko, the brainsnatcher!”

“Oh no!” the girl responded a bit dryly, walking in a calm trot towards Luuko.

“Y-your father is asleep, and I’ve possessed him!” Luuko said, still attempting to scare the unflinching child.

The girl stopped a few feet from her, then looked up with an innocent smile. “So anyway, do you want to have some fun with me, Luuko?” Luuko noticed that strangely, her vessel wasn’t roused by the girl’s words at all.

Bored from her failures to complete her homework and scare a child, Luuko played along with the girl. “What do you want to do?” she said, just moving along with the drift of fate.

“Let’s sneak into the spooky room!”

“Mmm, sure. Just lead the way.”

“Cool. I get to have an adventure with a brainsnatcher!” the girl began to walk backward, placing her back against the wall and motioning Luuko to open one of the doors, as if she couldn’t just do it herself.

Luuko began to walk to the door, her movements steady, unlike her normal sleepies, who were quite unbalanced due to the cognitive strain of controlling three bodies at once. She opened the door, and the girl walked through, still backward, then down the hall.

The hallway was a collection of doors leading down a massive building, most doors having a number attached to their rooms. If it was an apartment building, it was an expensive one, with sleek design, an expensive stone tiled floor, and varnished wooden doors.

Luuko followed the girl. “Do you even know what brainsnatcher means?”

“Of course I do! You’re controlling dad, right?”

“Mmm, I did say that. So what’s this ‘spooky room’?”

“Dad wouldn’t let me in it, but it’s soooo scary!”

“You’re giving me the chills already,” Luuko deadpanned.

The girl placed her back against the wall then motioned for Luuko to open the door to her right. “It’s that door.”

“Whatever you say, but why don’t you just open it yourself?”

The girl chuckled like it was a dumb question.

“Ok, well, can I know your name?” Luuko said, yawning to lower her thrall’s heartrate, though also because the talking was getting her tired.

“Layla.”

Luuko opened the door and looked inside. There was a various collection of items, many of which related to different professions, especially expertise. A plastic case of knives, a bucket with plumbing and engineering equipment, and even some dentist’s tools. “Uhh, Layla...this is just a storage closet.”

The girl looked over the door. For a moment, she scanned the items before doubling back in a visceral reaction, stumbling into a nearby wall. “T-there’s a-a kn-n-nife!”

Luuko looked back to the closet and picked up the knife case, where a variety of knives hat their own sockets, though one was absent. They seemed quite old, with many scratches and small chips on the blades. She held the case up. “You mean these?”

Layla slid down the wall, raising her hands defensively and averting her head. “G-get that away from me...”

Luuko realized her reaction was likley some type of phobia, so she set it back down. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you...” She began to walk towards the girl, clearly wanting to console her.

For some reason, Layla backed off, scooting across the ground, hands outstretched, as if Luuko’s approach threatened her.

Luuko’s body was faster than a child scooting on the ground, so she managed to place a hand on Layla’s shoulder.

Only for her hand to pass through.

Both of them froze as it happened, and Luuko took a few seconds of looking at her rough hand to register what had happened.

The girl curled up beside the wall, now just sad. “I’m sorry, brainsnatcher Luuko, I’m not...”

“You’re...a ghost?”

Lyla shook her head, tears beginning to fall down her face. “I-I didn’t want you to know because...I haven’t spoken with anyone for so long-” She sniffed. “a-and I wanted to see the spooky room, but...not...alone.”

Luuko seemed even less right in the mind after it was all explained to her. “You’re a ghost.” It shouldn’t have been all that surprising, given that she worked for an eldritch entity, but, like, it was weird.

The girl shook her head again. “The guy you’re possessing is my dad.”

“How...did you die?”

When she tried to remember, the girl burst into another fit of tears. She muttered in a neigh incomprehensible sentence, sniffing between every few words. “I-I saw a knife in that closet, and I got the urge to steal it..s-so I-I took it with me into the car t-then Dad was crashed into and...the knife...”

Was the ghost maybe a kleptomaniac? Mmm, nevermind, that wasn’t important. “What happened to that knife?” she asked on a hunch.

Layla turned slowly, revealing how it had been razed. A knife and many shards of glass were lodged in her back, her cause of death permanently marked on the ghost’s body. “I...am dead...what should I do, Luuko Brainsnatcher?”

“You know, that isn’t my last name. Anyway...how about we do some breathing exercises?” The girl didn’t protest, so Luuko continued. “Just do as I say, ok?” Luuko gave the girl a motherly smile with her dad’s face.

Layla nodded.

“Ok, breath in~”

The girl began breathing in through her small sniffles.

Then, Luuko counted:

“one,

two,

three,

four.

Now hold it in~”

the girl held her breath in as best she could, only sniffling once.

“one,

two,

three,

four,

five,

six,

seven,

eight.

Now breath out~”

The girl breathed out, her tears falling to the ground beneath her head. She was slowly falling asleep, leaning on the wall.

“one,

two,

three,”

The girl became more and more transparent each second that passed, mimicking her growing drowsiness.

“four,

five,

six,”

Layla smiled through her breath.

“seven~”

She was gone.

Luuko heard the sound of someone coming through the door to the room she had started in, then heard their voice, which began to rouse the dad from his sleep. “Dad? What are you doing sleeping on the floor?” It sounded like a male teenager.

She quickly retreated to her own body.

After returning to her body, Luuko cut her tie with the dream realm. Talking to that girl fade as she fell asleep had infected Luuko with drowsiness, so she felt like falling asleep, proper.